Successful instructors that don't record their own voice?

Hi there!

I'm building my first course now, and due to my very bad (spoken) English & accent, I consider paying a Voice Over Artist (aka professional narrator) to narrate the script I'm writing.

Pros:

* Very professional narration, so it will be more pleasing to watch my lectures (I could have never perfected it in the same way myself, no matter how hard I try; people sometime also tell me I have an annoying voice)

* This saves me the time of recording myself, which allows me to utilize this time to write more scripts for more courses. If I will have to record my own voice, I know it will take me a lottttt (!) of time, since I will make mistakes and lose my breath very often, and thus have to record more re-takes and re-takes.

Cons:

* Expensive, obviously

* Less personal - I can't film myself to be on screen, so my video editing will include a lot of graphics and animations (Luckily, I'm very experienced with video editing of these sorts - more than 20 years experience)

* Less scalable - I will have to depend on the same narrator for future courses.

Would you recommend doing this?

Do you know of successful instructors who do the same?

Thanks

Comments

  • ElianaC
    ElianaC Posts: 5,383 Udemy rank

    Hi @TomOrbach305 I'm bumping up your post in the hopes to get some comments from your fellow instructors.

  • @TomOrbach305
    Can you share one video with your voice which is in English ? My mother tongue is not English and there are many like me and you. Majority of my students don't find any difficulty with my English but I am getting some reviews related to my English accent. I tried to improve as I was able to but obviously I can't match with everyone's English accent.

    Has anybody told you that you are speaking very bad English OR your accent is bad ? Or Is it just your own opinion ?

    When I published my first course I did not have this kind of things in my mind. I was focusing on what I want to teach. I think you are yet to publish your very first course so I would say launch a course and see how your students will react. You can share few videos here in community and different instructors can give their opinion. Also Udemy has Test Video section where they provide you complete feedback on your video & audio.

    https://www.udemy.com/home/teaching/test-video/

  • Thanks! Here's a sound example of me:

    https://www.facebook.com/20minuteleaders/videos/ep310-tom-orbach-growth-marketing-manager-joltio/464576147911902/

    Even if it's objectively good, I'm really not comfortable with my spoken English...

  • @TomOrbach305
    To be honest I don't see any issue with your English accent. If your course does not require your face to record then you can have courses with screen casting and your voice. All of my courses are like this because those do not need my face.

    I have seen top earning instructors doing outsourcing of work but that is like editing, answering in QA section by hiring an assistant etc but they record their lectures themselves. Even some courses are having 30+ or 50+ hours of content. Also Udemy may ask you more info if you publish a course on your name recorded by someone else. Make sure you check with policy@udemy.com before doing this.

    "I will make mistakes and lose my breath very often, and thus have to record more re-takes and re-takes."

    I am enjoying this. If I have a bad cut during recording then I laugh there on myself and again I laugh during editing while I listen that part...ha ha...

    I have seen some instructors even re-record their 8-10 hours course if they want to improve the course quality even more.

    "Even if it's objectively good, I'm really not comfortable with my spoken English..."

    It seems you have already made up your mind on what you want to do. I can just say best of luck to you whatever approach you are going to take.

  • debra1111
    debra1111 Posts: 229 specialist rank

    How about Lovo or a similar software? Why pay an actual human when there are really great softwares? Plus a computer is guaranteed when a person can ditch the project wasting your time. I just was looking at another new program this week for Elearning teachers.

  • I had a listen to your video and also don't see an issue. You speak with passion and energy, which I like. By the way, I also don't like my own voice. But other people have no issue with it.

  • Thor
    Thor Posts: 2,311 rolemodel rank

    Honestly I would go for your voice and maybe work on your accent, I did that over the years and now I rarely get "I can't understand Thor" reviews, when I started 4 years ago they were semi frequent.

    AI voices are not allowed and if you pay a voice actor you need to remember they are now your brand, that is what students expect, meaning what if they stop working as voice actors or anything else happens, you now lost your brand.